Sunday Streets, I-45 plans and the (greater) Houston Heights

West 19th Street between Yale and North Shepherd is the site of the next Sunday Streets event April 26.

Cigna Sunday Streets returns to the Heights from noon to 4 p.m. this Sunday, April 26, this time along West 19th Street.

West 19th is already one of the most walkable commercial streets in the greater Houston Heights, and with motorized traffic blocked off between Yale and North Shepherd, it’ll be even more so. Sunday Streets is not a street festival ala White Linen Night, Holiday in the Heights or any of the other ones that dot the West 19th Street calendar.What it is is an opportunity to get out on a closed street with friends and neighbors, bike, enjoy the fresh air and experience the neighborhood in a different way.

The Sunday Streets event on White Oak last October was a bit wetter than this Sunday on West 19th is predicted to be.

Pedestrian-friendly West 19th shops and businesses are pretty experienced when it comes to this sort of thing, so expect to find plenty to do both inside and outside of the shops along the route.

This is the TxDOT plan for I-45 as it passes by Brooke Smith, the Woodland Heights and Germantown/Woodland Park between Cavalcade and Quitman.

Speaking of streets, information sessions on the Texas Department of Transportation’s plans for Interstate 45 redevelopment between downtown and Beltway 8 are scheduled for tonight, as well as Tuesday, April 28, and Thursday, April 30.

Dug Begley wrote an extensive piece on the proposed designs, which are heavily influenced by previous meetings and ideas proposed by the I-45 Coalition over the 10+ years this design phase has been ongoing. At one point, proposals even called for the destruction of historic Germantown and Woodland Park, and it was at least partially through aggressive public action and comment that those plans were abandoned.